I had mine at work yesterday ,I get a free flu shot anyway being asthmatic , but wasn’t well the day my surgery was doing them. It was on my to do list then my friend came on to the ward doing vaccinations so I had one there and then

There was a programme recently about the 1918 flu that I found fascinating. First off, nothing to do with Spain, but started in a poultry farmer in the USA just as he joined the army, so could spread it widely.

Saddest thing was that it could have been stopped earlier, but the army/government ignored advice about quarantine measures. And scariest thing was if it could spread so fast in 1918, think how fast it could go these days with air travel and so on.

I get my flu shot annually, and am glad I do even if it cost me 6 euros.

We had our jabs as soon as the vaccine hit the local pharmacie on 6 octobre and the nurses’ cabinet, two doors distant, stayed open all day to prick the local flesh with it. All very efficiently delivered. We suffered no adverse effects, which may mean our immune responses have gone permanently AWOL, but - hey ho - c’est la vie, tant qu’elle dure

Not for me…there’s nothing would make me get a flu shot nor any other vaccine…

Interestingly my friend in uk runs a day care for dogs…her own three Border Collies have only ever had puppy shots (and this was after she first titre tested for the waning of maternal bodies…)

She’s been looking after a dog who had just been given the kennel cough vaccine…she’s had to use her asthma medication for the first time in ages…in the kennel cough data sheet it says that immune compromised individuals should avoid all contact with the kennel cough vaccine and avoid contact with dogs who have had the kennel cough vaccine in the last 6 weeks…it sheds and manifests as whooping cough in immune compromised individuals…

Her own three Collies have never had the kennel cough vaccine and have never come down with kennel cough despite being at her daycare facility every day with all her doggy guests…

I still have the characteristic smallpox scar on my left upper arm, but there are now increasingly rare, whereas they used to be universal. I think you may have one Stella, but I doubt many other SFN subscribers have one. Have you? Could you recognise or describe one?

That’s the one, Jane, round (or oval) and dimply, left when the scab fell off . When I was vaccinated a drop of cowpoxy goo was spread on the upper arm, then the skin was scratched with a scarifier so the pox virus could get its you-dinner, with a double helping of juvenile skin.

I don’t know if the Jenner method was dumped in favour of something more clinical and less Farmer Giles, but UK smallpox vaccination ended in 1979, Google tells me.

I remember the BCG…I think I must have been about 10 as I was still at junior school…before I took my 11 plus…I remember lining up and a nurse with a circular instrument of needles…it’s also bringing back uncomfortable memories of lining up for the “nit nurse” and how rough she was…! I don’t remember me and my sister ever having “nits”…but by the time my 3 were at school then letters home about outbreaks were almost a weekly occurrence…it was a time in my life that I developed a love of tea tree oil and a spray that smelled like almonds but I can’t recall the name of it at the minute…???

Research reveals that a vaccinated individual not only can become infected with measles, but can also spread it to others who are also vaccinated against it - doubly disproving that the administration of multiple doses of MMR vaccine is "97%...

As I have said before you have to look at relative risks - not “is vaccine absolutely 100% safe under all circumstances” but “does it protect from the natural infection and are the risks of morbidity and mortality lower from the vaccine than from the natural infection”.

The trouble is that humans are really, really bad at assessing risk from uncommon, low frequency events, especially in today’s world where reporting of a single such event is “big news” or is fed through the distorting lens of social media.

One thing which this article does (which annoys me - sorry Helen) is to come up with what sounds like a huge number - 6,000-odd compensation claims for instance - by using very long time frames and no comparison figures for other causes. In this case the data is for a 30 year period.

Even if there were 200 vaccine related deaths a year (which is what 6000 over 30 years amounts to, but it is by no means certain these were all truly vaccine related) it is a drop in the ocean compared with other causes. For example homicide caused the death of 376 1-4 year-olds and 432 5-14 year-olds in the US in 1999. Perhaps the anti-vaccine crowd would better spend their efforts lobbying for gun control or accident prevention which claimed the lives of 4989 young Americans aged 1-14 in that year (and was the most common cause of death in this group).